Pictureland

Life, the universe and everything.   It's tempting to appropriate the title of the third of Douglas Adams' "Hitchhiker" novels toward the end of finding something big enough to do justice to Terrence Malick's fifth feature, The Tree of Life .  Of course, Adams' titles and books were full of whimsy and irony.   Both the great strength and dragging limitation of The Tree of Life is its absolute sincerity.   Apparently first conceived as film called Q after his great Days of Heaven , this latest film from the writer/director is at least partially the fruition of that ambitious origins of life on Earth project.   For good and bad, The Tree of Life has the look and bursting at the seams feel of something that has been worked on and worked over for decades. There is here all one usually finds in Malick.  There is the spare dialog which occurs often in the form of whispery statements, an evolution from the relatively conventional female voice-overs in...

  A funky waterside restaurant in Hamburg! Sub-pedestrian fast food which is transformed into gastronomic magic!  By a mad genius chef!  And there's soul music!  And other kinds of music!  There's some old guy called Sokrates who parks his boat in the building and never pays rent!  The restaurant is coveted by an evil real estate developer!  And don't forget about the beautiful women!  Zenos, the main character, often says "YEAH, MAN!"   Doesn't it sound wacky?   It has to be fun, right?  Well, as it turns out, no, man.    Given the progress of writer/director Fatih Akin's first three films  - the charmingly wack road picture, In July and the powerful dramas that followed,   Head-On and Days of Heaven - I'm inclined to blame this genial mess on co-writer and star Adam Bousdoukos.   Mr. Bousdoukos seems to have overestimated his own cha...